Something's Rotten

Lawmakers are in it only for themselves—and it's all thanks to us

By a slight majority, most Americans are not in favor of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). While some polls show areas of distinct and large support for the bill that allows Americans to make informed choices regarding their own health care, there are other parts of America, or peoples of America, who believe the ACA is nothing short of the devil’s doing. The latter groups view the ACA as just one more onramp to the interstate highway of hell and damnation, destination Socialism, USA.

And even more Americans are against Obamacare than are against the ACA, though the ACA and Obamacare are the same thing. When termed as Obamacare, the ACA becomes more sinister by a margin of over 10 percent. Such is the state of the American mind these days that we judge Product A as different from Product B even when they are the same thing. Maybe we can thank Madison Avenue for that. After all, we’ve been programmed to buy products that stink just because they are marketed as sweet clover. The opposite is equally true: Good products don’t market and sell well when attached to a negative connotation. Thus, if one doesn’t want the ACA to succeed, it’s best to call it Obamacare.

Utah’s Republican Sen. Mike Lee is the main ratchet behind what we all woke up to this Tuesday morning—a federal shutdown of the American ideal, except for bare-essential exceptions like the post office. Lee is a radical Tea Partyer who is opposed to all things Obama—especially the crown jewel of Obama’s tenure, the ACA, which Lee, naturally, calls Obamacare.

Nice going, Mike, you selfish and self-anointed nitwit. In the coming days’ mail, people are going to be notified that they will not be paid for certain work or deeds they have performed on behalf of all Americans—like fixing roads, guiding tourists through national parks, fighting wars, protecting and serving—and all the while, Mike Lee will be paid his undeserved salary, plus get a free haircut (he needs one). If his teeth or feet ache, he can also get free medical care. What is bad business for all of us is good business for Mike Lee.

Think of it. Could he have won political office as an orator, a brilliant mind, an original thinker, a decorated veteran, a person who put the public before personal needs? No. He took a shortcut—couldn’t manage his own personal financial affairs, but ducked the bullet on that one with a suspicious short sale on his home. He handed out some yellow ribbons, proclaimed his patriotism, decried all things Obama in a state that is already paranoid about the guy, and claimed that, constitutionally and religiously speaking, America has lost its way. Nevermind he didn’t have a road map to a better way but only had a podium, bought and paid for by the Tea Party, that will likely result in him being a crappy senator, but a rich one.Well, thanks for the tea, fellas. But they may not have all been drinking tea.

A number of Capitol Hill reporters have tweeted or blogged about the numerous times they’ve smelled alcohol on congressmen these past days. Congress is boozing it up, they say, as in this tweet from reporter Jennifer Bendery, “About every other House lawmaker I just talked to smelled like booze. It’s only 9pm. Wheeee!” Disclaimer: I could give a rat’s ass if someone has a drink, and our own office is known to share a beer or shooter. That being said, why would we send a guy like Mike Lee there in the first place? It’s simply inconceivable to me that he came to his positions and temperament of sober mind. What gives?

Who knows? It’s reported that Lee wants to “compromise” and would allow that certain agencies of our federal budget be restored. On second pass, it seems that Lee thinks it would be wise to continue funding defense and homeland security. D’oh. But the larger question is, how dare Lee and his cohorts demand “compromise” at all? It is they—not just Republicans, but also bona-fide cowards like the convenient Democrat Jim Matheson—who would kill our federal government in order to kill the ACA. They care only for their own “socialist” hides. They claim, as Orrin Hatch did the morning of Oct. 1, that Washington, D.C.—and our Congress—is full of idiots. Isn’t it amazing that, after nearly 40 years in office, Orrin Hatch has served with so many idiots but cannot see he is also one of them? Our senators and congressmen never look in the mirror. Nor do we.

Each of us is the idiot. We allow this. We vote for the bottom of the barrel. We let them rot. We let them ruin the good apples. We can’t tell the difference. We vote on singular issues like gun control or abortion and can’t reconcile why those who love guns and babies cannot do economic math. We vote them back in. We empower them.

They take care of themselves. They take care of their networks and cronies. They leave you to pay their bills, to fix their teeth, to purge their kidney stones. They pledge to protect you and your family, and they do so by sending your sons and daughters off to war. But they don’t want to pay for their care upon their return from that war. They don’t want to pay you to heal your own sorrows. They don’t want you to have the health benefits they have.

They are a class among themselves. They want their cake and want to eat it, too. History has not treated well stewards who behave as they now do.Â

About The Author

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Not 10 percent of Utah's population, but near 100, will, during their lifetime, be affected either directly or through a family member by the pain of cancer, a different maddening disease or from blowing out a knee at Brigham Young University.